Voluntary Amnesia in the Service of Warby Norman Solomon
www.dissidentvoice.org
June 23, 2005

Forget
it!

That seems to be an
unstated motto for American media coverage of the Iranian presidential
election. The axiom comes down to: “Don’t let history get in the way of
spin.”

Evasion smoothes the
way to the next war.

For maximum
propaganda effect, the agenda-setting must be decoupled as much as
possible from clear truths -- about the current president’s mendacity in
connection with Iraq, and about the record of U.S. government actions
toward Iran.

While a seriously
discredited President Bush strains to do damage control about his past
lies and present machinations on Iraq, the U.S. media coverage typically
presents his statements about Iran without so much as a whiff of
suspicion. A proven liar is treated like a presumptive truth-teller.

The ambient noise of
American media evokes history -- distant or recent -- as an option we may
choose to decline, like mustard on a burger. We’re encouraged to mentally
disconnect from relevant historic events. Double standards prevail.

Red-white-and-blue
journalists don’t doubt that the past sins of Washington’s present-day
foes are quite relevant today. So, it’s assumed to be incisive when
reporters keep reminding news consumers that Saddam Hussein committed huge
crimes such as mass killing of Kurds. But what about the fact that most of
the worst of those crimes occurred while the United States was supportive
of Hussein’s regime? That question gets short shrift.

Likewise -- while
American viewers, listeners and readers are apt to be aware that in 1979
some radical Iranians took American diplomats hostage at the U.S. embassy
in Tehran and held them for more than a year -- other historical facts
tend to be hazy or entirely absent. That suits the White House just fine.
From a Machiavellian standpoint, the best remedy for unpleasant historical
facts -- distant or recent -- is silence about them.

For instance: Under
diplomatic cover, U.S. intelligence operatives engineered a coup that
brought down the democratically elected prime minister Muhammad Mossadegh
in 1953 and installed the tyrannical Shah, who ruled with an iron and
torturing hand until an Islamic revolution triumphed in early 1979.
Iranians have ample reasons to be extremely wary of the U.S. government.
Yet major American news media scarcely acknowledge that the CIA-organized
1953 coup was a pivotal and destructive event in Iranian history.

From afar, history
is optional. But there’s a direct line from the 1953 coup to the
predicament that Iranians find themselves in today. Washington installed a
dictatorship that gave rise to a revolution that founded the repressive
Islamic Republic of Iran. Now, under that regime, advocates for theocracy
and democracy are in the midst of an intense struggle.

A week ago, on June
17, during Iran’s first round of voting for president, I visited a few
polling stations in neighborhoods of southern Tehran. One of the people
who agreed to be interviewed was a 27-year-old woman who gave her name as
Leilah. She stood in line with other Iranian women (men had a separate
line) waiting to get inside the school to cast their ballots. When I asked
who she intended to vote for, Leilah said that she still might choose not
to cast a ballot for any of the presidential candidates. “I don’t believe
in any of them,” she said.

Her evident despair
was rooted in history that cannot be understood without reference to the
1953 coup that jolted Iran off its democratic course.

While routinely
omitting even a mere mention of such matters as U.S. support for the
overthrow of a duly elected Iranian leader 52 years ago, American
journalists -- with few exceptions -- have kept news coverage of Iran in a
zone where history is always pliable. Now you see it, now you don’t. Under
such conditions of skewed reporting, the deep suspicion that infuses
Iranians’ views of the U.S. government is apt to seem inexplicable.

In contrast to
claims from the Bush administration (and from avowedly liberal media
sources like editorial writers at the New York Times), the Iranian
presidential elections this month have included important elements of
democratic participation. In recent weeks, Iranians have publicly and
intensively debated Iran’s domestic policies, with very significant
differences between the presidential contenders. While American
journalists often seem to be suffering from selective amnesia in their
reporting, many Iranians are acutely mindful of the need to understand
their country’s real history and begin a more hopeful chapter.

Meanwhile, there are
strong indications that the Bush administration is ramping up
preparations for some kind of military attack on Iran. The assault could
include a sustained series of missile strikes -- but even a single day of
bombing would have a wide range of grim effects, including severe damage
to Iran’s fledgling human rights movement. Activists in the United States
should work to avert such a catastrophe.